What did people do in the Ghettos during the holocaust?

The classic ghetto was the “Warsaw ghetto”. Type that in your search engine; There are hundreds of documents for you to read.

Start by finding an accurate definition of “ghetto.” It was home to hundreds of people; they lived their lives every day in as normal a fashion as possible, not knowing what was coming or when (or if) it would.

And I would question linking “ghetto” and “camps” together. They were two separate social structures with two different purposes, at least superficially.

The main task for everyone was survival for another day: trying to procure food, medicine, fuel for heat.

Congratulations on all that you’re about to learn. I hope you research well and really do learn about this topic.

As @gailcalled has already noted, “ghettos” were the enclaves in cities where Jews already lived their lives. As you should discover during your reading, what the Nazis typically did was build walls around the ghettos and strictly control (or attempt to control) ingress and egress. (Read about how many people, children in particular, learned to circumvent the barriers to obtain needed food and materials to those who lived as virtual prisoners in the ghettos.)

The “camps” were another item altogether. I do not know of any “transit camps”; the Germans did not want to dedicate the resources to make, staff and manage “feeder camps”. Generally, as I understand it, the rail transport managers would fill entire boxcars with people – standing room only, and inhumanely crowded (so that many people died simply during transportation) – and strung together whole trains of loaded boxcars at one time to end at a primary concentration camp, which may have been primarily a death camp, primarily a work camp, or a mixture of the two.

But don’t take our word for this; none of us is a primary source (that is, none of us had this experience; we weren’t there, so we’re not “primary”), and unless any of us presents scholarship to back up our claims, then we’re also not valid secondary resources. I think the best that you can expect from us here is an indication of what your own research should help you to uncover.

To answer your specific question “What did people do in the ghettos [not “ghetto camps”] on a daily basis, I expect that @zenvelo has given you the best indication of what people did: Imagine what you would do, for example, if you were locked into your house and prevented from leaving, prevented from exchanging money or labor with anyone on the outside – and then your water was turned off. People did what they had to do to survive, and that was a full-time occupation.

As a point of historical interest, the term ghetto has been around for a long time. The origin of the word refers to the Ghetto section of Venice, where Jews were confined during the Middle Ages. At this time, there were many such areas in European cities.

For a firsthand account of life in the ghetto, refer to the Diary of Anne Frank. She and her family spent their time as virtual prisoners hiding from the Germans.

You might also find this link to be of interest in your research.
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http://www.npr.org/2010/11/27/131614495/boy-an-icon-for-childhoods-lost-in-holocaust

The best way to find out is to read the testimony of those who lived through it, for example “A Cup of Tears” by Abraham Lewin written at the time but not published until much later.

The Shoa Foundation has some first hand descriptions of life in the ghettos which may provide some good information for you.

P.S. If you do use a Google search, be sure you are using reliable sources.

@LostInParadise Anne Frank isn’t a description of life in the ghetto, Amsterdam was not divided that way. The Franks were in hiding; jews moved into the ghetto in Warsaw had been identified and moved there by the Nazis.

Thanks for pointing that out. The book is still a good account of what life was like for some of the Jews at that time.

Transit camps – Key Stage 3 – The Holocaust Explained
www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-camps/...of-camps/transit-camps...‎
The Nazis set up transit camps in occupied lands. Examples of transit camps include Drancy in France, Mechelen in Belgium and Westerbork in the Netherlands.

What was the role of transit camps? – The Holocaust Explained…
www.theholocaustexplained.org/...nazi-camp...camps/what-was-the-role-...‎
Mechelen. The Nazis established Mechelen transit camp, to the south of Brussels, Belgium, as a detention and deportation camp, on 4 August 1942.

Westerbork transit camp – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerbork_transit_camp‎
The Westerbork transit camp (Dutch: Kamp Westerbork, German: Durchgangslager Westerbork) was a World War II Nazi refugee, detention and transit camp

Berga. Berga and Beyond. Civilian Prisoners. Transit Camps | PBS
www.pbs.org/wnet/berga/beyond/transit.html‎
A moat and a barbed wire fence enclose the Vught transit camp (directly above). ... In the Nazis’ western occupied territory, camps such as Westerbork

Drancy Transit Camp – History Learning Site
www.historylearningsite.co.uk › World War Two › Holocaust Index‎
As was common at other Nazi transit camps, many Jews were crammed into cattle wagons. The journey to Auschwitz took a day-and-a-half.

Drancy Transit Camp – Jewish Virtual Library
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Drancy.html‎
The camp of Drancy was a transit camp located not far from Paris.

Stories from Terezín: the Nazi transit camp with a musical legacy…
www.theguardian.com › News › World news › Holocaust‎
Apr 5, 2013 – Great composers and conductors were interned at the Nazi concentration camp near Prague.

Trying to survive. Living from one day to the next.